The battle in the Teutoburg forest (7)

Battle in
the Teutoburg forest (German Teutoburger Wald):
the defeat of the Roman commander Publius
Quintilius Varus against the Germanic tribesmen of the
Cheruscian leader
Arminius in 9 CE. Three legions were annihilated and Germania remained
independent from Roman rule.

Aftermath

Although groups of survivors reached the Lippe
valley, the Roman army that had permanently been under attack since it
had passed through the Kalkriese narrows, no longer existed. Tacitus
tells
how captured officers were sacrificed to Germanic gods. Other Roman
captives
were to serve as slaves, although some of them were later ransomed, and
returned to the Roman world. But this happened later.

Cassius
Dio and Velleius
Paterculus continue their account of the ambushed army almost
identically
with the story that there was one fortress in Germania that remained in
Roman hands.

The valor of Lucius Caedicius, prefect of the
camp, deserves
praise, and of those who, pent up with him at Aliso, were besieged by
an
immense force of Germans. For, overcoming all their difficulties which
want rendered unendurable and the forces of the enemy almost
insurmountable,
following a design that was carefully considered, and using a vigilance
that was ever on the alert, they watched their chance, and with the
sword
won their way back to their friends.

Dio tells the story in greater detail (text)
but does not mention the name of the fortress. It must have been a
large
stronghold (it had a prefect and is called a castra)
in the valley
of the Lippe. The name Aliso suggests that it is
identical with
the fortress that Drusus
had built near the river Elison, Oberaden;
but this had been evacuated in 8 BCE. On the other hand, Aliso
is
not the same as Elison, and perhaps we are allowed
to identify the
fortress with Haltern,
which perfectly suits Dio's and Paterculus' words. It was hastily
evacuated:
in one of the potter's pits, at least twenty-four soldiers were buried;
weapons were stored away; coins were buried in hoards; much pottery
survives
intact.

Tiberius (British Museum)

Tacitus' also mentions Aliso, but in another context (Annals,
2.7.3).
He says that there was a tomb for soldiers of the legions
of Varus.
Unless this refers to the tomb that was later built on the main
battlefield
(below; this is the usual
interpretation), this
suggests that survivors of the battle in the Teutoburg Forest were
killed
during the escape from Aliso, which in turn proves that survivors of
the Kalkriese
ambush and the disintegration of the Roman army -as we have seen above,
possibly in the Ems valley east of Münster- arrived in the
Lippe valley.

Other Roman soldiers from Germania had already reached
the Rhine,
and the news that something terrible had happened spread upstream along
the river. From Mainz,
general Lucius Nonius Asprenas (Varus' nephew) immediately sent his
legions, I
Germanica and V
Alaudae, to the north and occupied the fortresses of Cologne
and Xanten.
This
prevented the Germanic tribes from invading Gaul. At the same time,
general Tiberius
(the future emperor) marched from the Danube to the Rhineland with the
legions XX
Valeria Victrix and XXI
Rapax, and prepared for renewed war.

Bust
of Octavian/Augustus as high priest. Museo Nacional de Arte Romano, Mérida.

In Rome, the populace was afraid, and the emperor Augustus
ordered that watch be kept by night throughout the city.

He was so greatly affected that for several
months in succession
he cut neither his beard nor his hair, and sometimes he could dash his
head against a door, crying "Quintilius Varus, give me back my
legions!"

During the winter, Arminius created a new tribal coalition. Varus' dead
body had been identified by the Germanic warriors, who cut off the
Roman's
head and sent it to king Maroboduus, the leader of the Marcomanni,
hoping
that he would join the general insurrection. However, he refused, and
sent
Varus' remains to Rome, where Augustus buried the head in the mausoleum
of his own family.

Bust of Germanicus, found in the Roman Baths of Smyrna. Archaeological Museum of Izmir

After three campaigns (in 9, 10 and 11), Tiberius thought that the
Germanic tribes had been punished sufficiently, and he celebrated a
triumph
in 12. He also decided not to try to occupy the country east of the
Rhine
anymore. This was not surprising: we already noticed above
that he already taken a similar decision in 8 BCE. During his reign as
emperor (14-37), Tiberius was to stick to this policy.

This does not mean that he ignored the northern
frontier. No less than
eight legions were to guard the Rhine:

The army of Germania
Inferior was stationed along the Lower Rhine: at Bonn,
I Germanica, at Neuss,
XX Valeria Victrix, and finally V Alaudae and XXI Rapax in Xanten.

These two armies were commanded by the son of Tiberius' brother Drusus,
Germanicus.

Germanicus

During the autumn of 14, the army of Germania Inferior unexpectedly
invaded
"free" Germania. The cause was probably that the soldiers were unquiet
after the death of Augustus and the accession of Tiberius, and
Germanicus
wanted to give them something else to think about.

Part of the cavalry, and some of the auxiliary
cohorts led
the van; then came the first
legion, and, with the baggage in the center, the men of the twenty-first
closed up the left, those of the fifth,
the right flank. The twentieth
legion secured the rear, and, next, were the rest of the
allies.

This is an interesting line, because it shows that Germanicus
understood
that he had to cover his flanks, something that Varus had probably not
(above). This
force reached the Marsi
on the Upper Lippe and the Bructeri on the Upper Ems. In other words,
the
army moved south and north of the Lippe valley, which was, for reasons
unknown to us, no longer a point of interest. However, there are
indications
that the Romans had occupied part of this zone (e.g., Tacitus describes
that Germanic warriors besieged a fortress in the Lippe valley: Annals
2.7).

Next year saw spectacular actions. In the spring,
Germanicus led the
army of Germania Superior against the Chatti, destroyed an important
settlement,
reached the Upper Weser, liberated the pro-Roman Germanic leader
Segestes,
and captured Arminius' wife Thusnelda. At the same time, his adjutant
Caecina
ordered the army of Germania Inferior to attack the Marsi again. This
prevented
other tribes, like the Cherusci, from supporting the Chatti.

Human remains found in the Kalkriese narrows

In the summer, Caecina attacked the Bructeri along the Upper Ems again.
The soldiers of one of his colonels, Lucius Stertinius, found back the
eagle standard of the Nineteenth
legion. Germanicus himself went to the country of the
Batavians (perhaps
to Vechten),
where he placed four legions on ships, and sailed along the country of
the Frisians and Chauci, who surrendered. Now, Germanicus could proceed
to the Ems, and from the area of Münster, he marched to the
Teutoburg
Forest, where he buried the dead. At least, that is what Tacitus tells
us. The problem is that he tells that Germanicus' army first reached
Varus'
first camp, then the second camp, and finally the place where Varus
committed
suicide. This is a movement from east to west, whereas Germanicus in
fact
must have moved from west to east. Probably, Tacitus could not resist
the
temptation to give a more climactic description.

Prince Germanicus
with one of the recovered eagle standards. Coin from the reign
of his son Caligula (British
Museum)

However this may be, we
are certain that a burial
took place at the Kalkriese, where five pits were found that contained
the (often cut) bones of many adult males. The skeletons seem to have
been
exposed for a few years before they were finally buried.

After the burial, Germanicus' army proceed to the
Cherusci, where a
non-conclusive skirmish was fought against Arminius. After this,
Germanicus
ordered his army to return, but he was pursued by Arminius. Germanicus'
army was able to leave this theater of operations, so Arminius now
pursued
Caecina's army, which was still in the neighborhood and tried to return
over the pontes
longi through the bog area between the
Ems and Lippe. We
already noted above
that Caecina
dreamt that he saw Varus, and that Arminius addressed his soldiers,
comparing
the situation to the last hours of Varus.

In the year 16, Germanicus built a large fleet that was
to be gathered
in the country of the Batavians, near modern Nijmegen.
Before he could start the naval expedition, however, Germanic warriors
laid siege to a Roman fortress in the valley of the Lippe. They had
already
destroyed a tomb of Roman soldiers that had belonged to the three
legions
of Varus. Germanicus restored order (but not the tomb) and the area
between
the Rhine and Aliso was occupied again.

Germanicus now launched the naval attack. The navy sailed through the canal
of Drusus and along the country of the Frisians and Chauci
again, and
the army landed in the valley of the Upper Ems. From here, it marched
to
the east, where it encountered the army of Arminius at a place called
Idistaviso,
on the east bank of the Weser. The river was first crossed by the
Batavian
regiment. Its commander Chariovalda played, according to Tacitus, a
heroic
role. In the ensuing battle, Arminius was defeated by eight legions. To
show the Roman strength, Germanicus sent back part of his army through
open country. A victory monument was built in Nijmegen, the capital of
the Batavians.

Germanicus' successes were considerable: the Lippe
valley and the North
Sea coast had been reconquered, Arminius defeated, Roman prestige
restored.
It was up to the emperor Tiberius to decide what to do next: to accept
the conquests and return to the aggressive policy of Augustus, or to
stick
to his own position, and leave the Germanic tribes alone. He chose the
latter: the Lippe valley was evacuated by the Romans, and the tribes,
left
alone, started to fight against each other. Arminius was murdered,
Germanicus
recalled.

The Hermannsdenkmal
at
Detmold (Germany), a statue
of Arminius erected in 1875

It was a wise decision. During the next decades, the Roman legions
were sometimes to invade Germania, and Roman diplomats were always able
to create disputes among the tribes. For more than two centuries, the
west
bank of the Rhine was safe.

Assessment

It is possible to overstate the importance of the battle in the
Teutoburg
Forest. As we have already seen above,
this certainly happened in the nineteenth century, when, especially in
Germany, Arminius, and Varus became symbols of an eternal opposition
between
the noble Germanic savages and their decadent, Latin
speaking archenemies - the French.

This eternal
opposition is simply nonsense. After
the horrors of the First World War, the great Belgian historian Henri
Pirenne
(1862-1935) was among the first to oppose the idea, but Europe needed
a Robert Schuman and a Konrad Adenauer to understand it. From the reign
of
Louis XIV to the Second World War, control of the Rhine has been a
source
of conflict between France and Germany, but the Rhineland has always
remained
a zone where two European cultures met and exchanged experiences.

The Hermannsdenkmal: parody
in the Haltern museum

Yet, the battle was important. The Roman empire met its limits.
Tiberius
accepted that there were areas without towns that were not predigested
for Roman rule. During the next centuries, the Germanic tribes learned
from Rome, and Rome learned from them. But always, Germania retained some of its
independence.

This had serious consequences. One example may suffice
to illustrate
this: if the Romans had kept the country between the Rhine and Elbe,
the
North Sea tribes that were later known as Saxons would have spoken
Latin.
The English language would -for better or worse- never have existed,
and
German would have been marginal. The great linguistic division of today's
western
world would simply not exist without the battle in the Teutoburg Forest. But the fights were not the cause of this rift; they were a precondition.

Literature

T. Clunn, In Quest of the Lost Legions (1999)
[updated edition 2005;
recommended]

Map of the Osnabrück
and Kalkriese. The yellow arrow indicates the battlesite.

Museums

Finally, a word about museums. The governments of Germany,
Nordrhein-Westfalen,
and Niedersachsen deserve the highest praise for creating, in the
1990's,
two beautiful museums, which are both very much worth a visit:

The Kalkriese Museum east of Bramsche;

The Westfälisches Römermuseum at
Haltern.

You can combine a visit to these museums with visits to the
reconstructed
Roman city at Xanten
(the Archäologische Park) and the
Römisch-Germanisches Museum
at Cologne
and have a really nice holiday.

Yet, it must be admitted that the Kalkriese museum can
be a
bit disappointing. The battle site itself has been changed into an
interesting
place and there is nothing wrong with that; the problem -if this is not
too strong a word- is the museum. In our fortunate age, in which a
visit
to a museum is within reach of nearly everyone, any museum faces the
choice
between offering information for specialists and presenting objects in
such a way that non-specialists can appreciate the interest of
something
they would otherwise have ignored. Archaeological museums are no longer
repositories of dull and usually broken objects, but have changed into
seducers.

I think that in Kalkriese, the pendulum has swung a bit too
far. One example will illustrate this: the coins that
were discovered at the Goldacker (above)
are shown as a fascinating, intriguing treasury, very impressive
indeed,
but you can hardly see the design of the coins themselves.

I am not saying that this is wrong; yet, the museum can
be a bit disappointing
if you simply want to study the objects.